Smackdown at the UN
Today’s world leaders look more like professional wrestlers every day.
The presidents of Venezuela and Iran pulled a verbal tag-team on Gorgeous George W. in the United Nations General Assembly this week.
“The devil came here yesterday,” said Venezuela’s “Stone Cold” Hugo Chavez. “He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world.”
Chavez was referring to Bush’s Ric Flair rant in which the US leader attacked Venezuela’s tag-team partner, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by addressing the Iranian people directly:
“…Your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation’s resources to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons.”
“Iron Sheik” Ahmadinejad staged his own counter attack just hours after Bush left the ring, accusing the US and UK of abusing the power of their Security Council vetoes.
“If they have differences with a nation or state, they drag it to the Security Council,” and assign themselves the roles of “prosecutor, judge and executioner,” Ahmadinejad said. “Is this a just order?”
He also blasted the Council for its failure to negotiate an immediate cease-fire at the beginning of Israel’s war on Hezbollah and hundreds of civilians in Lebanon.
“The Security Council sat idly by for so many days, witnessing the cruel scenes of atrocities against the Lebanese … Why?” asked Ahmadinejad, whose government is one of Hezbollah’s main backers.
He said the answer is self-evident: “When the power behind the hostilities is itself a permanent member of the Security Council, how then can this council fulfill its responsibilities.”
So Chavez, who relishes any opportunity to badmouth Bush, backed his buddy when he spoke on Wednesday, accusing the Bush regime of “domination, exploitation and pillage of peoples of the world.”
Employing Bush’s tactic Chavez said, “We appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our head,” he said.
With Venezuela angling for a rotating seat in the Security Council and Iran ignoring a Security Council resoultion that calls on its government to suspend uranium enrichment, the common adversary for both countries is Washington’s dominance of the Council.
In an interview with NBC Nightly News, Ahmadinejad challenged Bush again. “I explicitly say that I am against the policies chosen by the U.S. government to run the world because these policies are moving the world toward war,” he said.
Instead of more war, let’s see Chavez and Ahmadinejad against the tag team of George Bush and Tony Blair in a WWE-style cage match. Kofi Annan could referee. That would make for great television and political drama of the highest order. They already have the trash talking part down.
